At the top end of the salary range is Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers with $US27.8 million (he has the top base salary in the NBA).

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Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks is second, with $US19.9 million, while 19-year-old Anthony Davis, the No.1 pick in the 2012 NBA draft, is the lowest paid of the 12-member team with a base salary of $US5.1 million, according to Spotrac, which publishes details of US sport contracts online.

In contrast, a basketballer playing in Australia's NBL earns an average of $150,000 to $200,000 each season. In the Euroleague - where Boomers' Joe Ingles (FC Barcelona Regal) and David Anderson (Mens Sana Basket), among others, ply their trade - the average pay hovers about half-a-million dollars.

Kevin Durant ... jumps for the ball during his team's match against Australia. Photo: AFP

Australia's Andrew Bogut, who was ruled out of the Olympic competition because of injury, pulled in a salary of $US13 million this NBA season.

The base salaries of the US stars do not include their sponsorship deals, which can sometimes be more than double their pay.

LeBron James, who some commentators described as taking a "pay cut" when he signed for the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2010, was paid $US17.5 million by his club for the season just gone, but is second on US business magazine Forbes' list of highest-paid athletes at this year's London Games with earnings of $US53 million over the past year.

"So you go to the end of the season, [Team USA] training camp is two weeks later. You're giving up a lot to do it. It's something you want to do. But it's taxing on your body. You're not playing for the dollar. But it would be nice if you would get compensated."

Wade - the US's leading scorer in the 2008 Games - later sought to clarify his comments on Twitter.

But the dominance of Americans over other teams, which saw them set an Olympic scoring record of 156-73 against Nigeria, has once again raised the question of why the basketball competition is not subject to an age limit like the footballers, or even restricted to only amateurs.

NBA Commissioner David Stern has been at the forefront of a push to impose an age limit in the Olympics and set up a separate competition run by the NBA and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). But critics said this week his push was not about levelling the playing field, and was instead driven by financial considerations.

"[I]t is the Olympics, and this is important. If they go to a tournament with just the young playing, it would lose all the beauty of basketball - just another youth kind of tournament," Lithuania's Martynas Pocius told Yahoo! Sports ahead of his country's quarter-final game against Russia last night. "The USA would just dominate it, because there's just so much more talent [at the] under-23 level."

Lithuania's coach, Kestutis Kemzura, said it was important teams such as Russia and his country, which lost to the US last week by five points, be given the chance to try and beat the Americans.

"Of course [the Olympics] matters. We were fighting for this place. I don't understand this idea of sending younger players, not sending our best to the Olympics. I do not understand it," Kemzura said.

"If we leave everything on money, and money runs the show, where's the sport? Where's [the] national team idea?"